Project 7 : AirBand Dipole

Another rainy day project! Recently, i have been making great use of my RTL Dongle with SDR# to cover the airband as well as local signals in the 118-170 MHz range. The problem: my Discone did not do a good enough job. The solution: a quick build dipole.
In keeping with spirit of this blog, i sourced the parts from an old tv antenna and a bit of pvc pipe i had left over from the multiband longwire build. The 2 elements were cut to 58cm and fed into the pipe...and thats it! Easy peasy.

The "new" Dipole mounted

SDR#

A welcome addition to my antenna family

The results are a fantastic improvement on the Discone. I'm picking up airports and aircraft  from all over the state as well as interstate. The signals are clear, particularly from the aircraft. I'm happy now that between both SDRs, i have HF and VHF Aero covered. As a test, i followed a Qantas international flight (listening on VHF) from take off, then on HF as it left our shores and ultimately tracked it using HFDL as it flew out over the Pacific.No shortage of interesting things to listen to once the cold days and nights really set in.Build time: approximately one hour.